The contradiction of poker machines and the comfort of our clubs

Poker machines and contradictions appear to be comfortable bedfellows.
Up front, the once known “one-arm bandits”, but which are now more amiably known as “gaming machines”  with only buttons, have the potential to decimate lives.
Considered in isolation, the addiction some have to the machines or at least the idea of winning they inculcate and the subsequent devastation brought on by the inevitable mounting losses, we should unquestionably disable them forthwith.
Tasmanian MP, Andrew Wilke, who has pledged his support for the Labor Gillard Government and has witnessed the personal wreckage that emanates from poker machine addiction, wants the government to introduce, nation-wide, pre-commitment technology for all gaming machines.
Players would need to indicate how much they were prepared to gamble each day and so they would then be issued with a card on which the limit was inscribed and once they had reached it they could not access another gaming machine, anywhere in Australia.

Moama RSL CEO,
 Mr Ashley Menzies.

Although gaming clubs have not yet had the intimate workings of the card-based control explained, they do know they would shoulder the costs of updating all their machines.
Just recently, at the annual general meeting of the Moama RSL Club, the Chief Executive Officer, Mr Ashley Menzies, warned members that Mr Wilke’s proposal, should it become law, could bring the club to its knees.
He predicted that Mr Wilke’s pre-commitment proposal would reduce the club’s income by nearly half to seriously erode its employment abilities (it presently employs about 100 people), end the broad support it provides to local community groups and, naturally, scale back the extent of and comfort provided to its hundreds of members, many of whom come from throughout Victoria and distant parts of Australia.
Mr Ashley said his club has only one user of the gaming machines who has personally acknowledged their problem and subsequently had themselves banned from the premises.
That contrasts markedly with some of the big metropolitan clubs that can have as many as 150 people voluntarily excluded from their premises and so have a full-time person administering that aspect of the club’s business.

Mr Ashley says it appears unfair and unreasonable to target poker machines when so many other avenues to gambling exist, among them all sports, and all of which can easily be accessed in the online world.
Multi-million dollar clubs such as Mr Ashley’s unquestionably profit from poker machines, but they also have an incalculable social value, particularly in country communities, that seems to have escaped Mr Wilke’s notice.
Many people, old and young, use the likes of the Moama club as a meeting place, a place where they can engage in various social activities and, importantly, enjoy excellent food in comfortable surrounds at particularly low cost, courtesy of poker machine profits

Our role in easing the world's difficulties

A collision of circumstances about which we can individually do little, but strangely still play a huge part in easing, is impacting on our world.

Has capitalism been good
 or negative for life on earth?

We stew in our overwhelming sense of impotency as the world’s economy implodes; we watch with a crushing sense of powerlessness as our climate changes; our prodigious energy obesity worsens although warnings of earth’s finitude get louder; and violence, both physical and emotional, pervades most everything we do.
Our speculative intentions crumble as we seek the illusion of security associated with financial gain, while we mostly ignore the one investment that will realise a truly measureable return – the social equity and wellbeing of all our fellows.
We live in a world driven by a passion for quantity, the belief that nirvana is to be  found in bigger, faster, stronger and more. It is not.
The bliss humans have long pursued through this is, in reality, fleeting and when unravelled from the hype of our mercantile world, it is little more than a state of mind, while the delight we seek is found in kindly collaboration with our fellows.
As the human project becomes knotted and tangled we can rely on entropy, that unrelenting force of nature that always seeks equilibrium, irrespective of whatever other forces maybe in play, to again find the simplicity on which our ongoing welfare depends.
The much maligned austerity some governments have attempted will soon be foisted upon us all even though we may try to ignore the realities presently circling the earth.
Rather than pretend they don’t exist, that they are happening to others or somewhere else or that if we leave our heads in the sand long enough, they will be gone when we look up, we should be investing heavily in our social capital and putting our faith in a bank built from human kindness and an alliance to give us robust communities that understand and work towards resilience.
In simple terms walk whenever and wherever you can; pursue cycling with the same vigour; take advantage of public transport when possible; as much as you can, feed yourself; reduce, in any way possible, your consumption of fossil fuels; agitate for administrative changes that will allow for a re-thinking of living density in your town or city; support your local business, but demand its service be the best; apply, when you can, the principle of shopping in a “one store only” business; educate yourself – for what you know today might be useless tomorrow; and, probably most important of all, engage with your fellows.
Energy will become a priority as the decades unfold and in an age of scarcity those with skills of yesteryear will best endure the dilemmas of the world.